


chopsticks

by preromantics



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Developing Relationship, First Date, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-25
Updated: 2012-09-25
Packaged: 2017-11-15 01:30:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/521659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preromantics/pseuds/preromantics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The thing is, it looks like Derek's cooked for </i>Stiles.<i> Which is just strange on so many levels.</i> (Spoiler alert: Derek didn't cook, but he can and would. For Stiles. Yeah, Stiles is still working on that thought, too.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	chopsticks

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a one-word drabble meme tumblr prompt: _Stiles/Derek, food._ Not sure how this happened, but a lot of feels ended up woven around the 'food' part.

"Did you -- cook?" Stiles asks, after a lengthy pause during which he both stares at Derek's button down with and (pressed? ironed? there are  _creases!_ )jeans and also shuffles through and past at least ten things in his head he definitely shouldn't say out loud at the start of their date. Date thing. Thing that might be a date, but is more likely just a fancier prelude to sex than window-climbing and post-pack-meeting because Stiles blurted something out about food and Derek happened to be paying attention.

The thing is, it looks like Derek's cooked for  _Stiles._ Which is just strange on so many levels. 

"Maybe," Derek says, glancing at the plates set up on the table with food already set out on them. "Did you want me to?"

"What? No. Delivery pizza would've been a-okay with me, I don't need, like, wooing. I'm clearly on board with what's been happening, uh, lately." Stiles spots the flap of a take out container stuck behind the one large jar on Derek's half-finished kitchen counter as he's talking, though, and smirks. "Take out chinese is good, too."

Derek rolls his eyes, steps around Stiles (brushes up against his whole side to get around him, which is just unfair, because the kitchen may be bare-bones right now but it's also gigantic) and pulls out his chair. "I  _can,"_ he says.

Stiles makes a face at him as he takes his seat; when he'd gone off on a half-awake ramble mostly incoherently mumbled into Derek's abs the other night in his bed post-orgasm, he hadn't actually meant Derek was all of the sudden required to plan dates for them and pull out his chair and be weird. Weird-er. Stiles definitely felt off his game tonight, couldn't even figure out which eyebrow raise he was getting at the moment, the annoyed-but-reluctantly-amused one or the fond-and-amused one that only comes out around Stiles. Actually, both of those particular classifications of eyebrow raises usually only come out around Stiles, and he's damn proud of both that fact and the fact he's got a classification (color-coded, Lydia helped, he's planning on making it a poster and giving it to Derek for Christmas, and Danny's good at graphic design so Stiles just has to figure out how to rope him into it) system for Derek's eyebrows.

"You can what?" Stiles asks, by the time his brain catches up to his mouth. Derek is already seated across from him, too far away, even though the table just recently went through some accidental breakage-and-fixing that left it at least 40% smaller than it's original size. 

"Cook," Derek says, waving a hand at the food he definitely didn't cook. 

"With a microwave?" Stiles asks. "A little werewolf oven?" 

Derek gives him an unimpressed look and picks up the chopsticks next to his plate, handling them unfairly well and easily.

Stiles looks at his own chopsticks warily. His coordination is debatable at best while walking, so he's never really attempted chopsticks. It's way easier to stuff your face with a fork, anyway. The Stilinkski men like forks and ordering enough Chinese take out to get at least four more fortune cookies thrown in their bag than they need, really, and chopsticks make good kindling around the fireplace on the rare occasion they need to use it. 

"I can bake," Derek offers, polietly waiting until after he's done chewing and swallowing his first bite, even though Stiles saw him just this  _week_ trying to critique Boyd's pitching technique with at least half a slice of pizza in his mouth. 

Stiles fiddles with one of his chopsticks and tries (and fails) not to picture Derek in an apron, baking pies in the kitchen. "Bake?"

"Yes, Stiles, I can bake things. Pies, bread, I know you're familiar with food."

"What, really? Why don't you bake things for me?" Stiles asks, automatic, like the ridiculous person he is, and he interests himself with trying to figure out how to make the chopsticks move together instead of in opposite directions between his fingers. 

"The gas isn't hooked up yet," Derek says. 

Stiles gives up on the chopsticks for a moment, hopes Derek hasn't been paying attention, and reaches for a fortune cookie from the middle of the table. "I see cookies in my future," he says. 

The corner of Derek's mouth turns up and Stiles fumbles with the cookie wrapper in his hands. This date thing is stupid. Stiles wants to get up and kiss away the smile starting at corner of Derek's stupid mouth and not investigate how it makes him feel at  _all,_ because this -- whatever they've been doing before Stiles went and mumbled about being fed before brain melting sex and taken out -- wasn't supposed to be complicated and make Stiles feel like his stomach is all twisty inside and like curling his toes into his socks under the table. 

"I can't promise they'll actually be good," Derek says, conversationally, still too far away at the opposite end of the table. "I haven't really baked since -- in a while."

"Oh," Stiles says. "I used to sit on the counter and watch my mom bake. She said she'd teach me someday. We usually just get slice and bake stuff from the grocery store, now."

"Do you want a fork?" Derek asks, after a lengthy pause that makes Stiles want to laugh, just to fill up the space with all the things neither of them are saying.

So they'll have to work up to life story things over dinner instead of pressed into skin under sheets -- if they're doing whatever they're doing for real -- Stiles figures there will be some sort of learning curve. Stiles  _wants_  to do this, as awkward as it feels right now, as much as he felt weird about showing up alone for dinner without any of the others, just because he felt like Derek was humoring him. 

"Oh," Stiles says, again, and then shakes his head, covers his own internalized monologue and subsequent realization with: "No, I'm good with the chopsticks. So good with them. A chopstick master. I should be on some sort of show like Top Chef but for people who do the eating, not the cooking."

Derek snorts and does a twisty thing with his chopsticks that traps a piece of delicious looking orange chicken in-between a bunch of noodles wrapped up into a perfect bite that he then salutes Stiles with. 

Stiles picks up his chopsticks again and sneaks a glance at their paper holder where the diagram for how to hold them is printed and tries to arrange his fingers neatly as shown. 

Derek does his weird nasally huff of laughter again and stands up from his chair. "Stiles," he says, shit, so fond, and Stiles is definitely going to have to go home and reevaluate the things he's kept compartmentalized for so long, The Awesome Sex Thing With Derek vs. The Unfortunate Feelings Derek Can Probably Sniff Out or Something (Do Research, Don't ask Doc Again, He'll Laugh).

"Don't get a fork," Stiles says, "I have this under control."

Derek doesn't walk across to the counter, though, just slides up to the side of Stiles' chair and crouches down a little, wrapping his hand around where Stiles is sort of stabbing at a piece of chicken with one of the chopsticks (the other pointing ninety degrees the other way, useless), and molding his fingers against Stiles'.

"Here," Derek says, pressing at Stiles' thumb, hand all warm and big and gentle. "Then just --" Derek moves Stiles fingers around some more, easy, because Stiles' hand has gone sort of limp and his mouth might be open a little, watching both of their hands around a pair of chopsticks, "-- there, now move your hand more naturally."

"This is not natural," Stiles says, as Derek's hand leaves, but he moves his fingers and oh, well. Fine, if that's how it works. He looks up at Derek, clicking his chopsticks together, prepared to stuff his mouth and say thanks around a gigantic bite just to see Derek's disgusted face, but Derek is looking at him in a way Stiles can't figure out so he forgets about doing that gets caught up in staring back. 

"Thanks," Stiles says, slowly, tracking the way Derek swallows, the movement of it along the line of his throat. 

"Yeah," Derek says.

"Valuable life skill," Stiles says, nodding, clicking his chopsticks together once more before tossing them on the table and reaching up with both hands to drag Derek down by his stupid button-down collar.

Stiles groans into Derek's mouth almost as soon as their lips meet, off-centered and a little too hard, but Derek reacts instantly, his hands coming to brace himself on Stiles' shoulders and pull Stiles even closer. 

Derek's mouth tastes citrusy from the food Stiles hasn't managed to try yet and his tongue is insistant, tracing Stiles' bottom lip before pulling it between his own and then leaning forward to get at more of Stiles' mouth.

"You're so --" Derek starts, but he doesn't get anything else out because Stiles sort of refuses to stop kissing him. They haven't managed a lot of time just kissing yet, over the past few months, more important things to be doing, but Stiles just wants to spend hours making out with Derek on the new couch in the recently finished living room until he wants to crawl out of his own skin and --

"Yes, yeah. Now," Derek says, nipping at Stiles' jaw, and Stiles realizes he's been mumbling between kisses and against Derek's lips. He should probably work on the mumbling.

"Oh my god," Stiles says, groaning and tilting his head back for the path Derek's lips are on, slickly moving up to Stiles' ear. "I -- yeah, absolutely, but I'm actually really starving right here. Because of the not eating from before, because you put way too much faith in assuming I had enough coordination to know how to use chopsticks on this date. Thing. Couch after, though."

Derek's lips drag down his neck until they reach the collar of Stiles' shirt, where he noses against Stiles' collarbone before stepping back entirely. "I could eat," he says, pupils blown as he looks down at Stiles.

Stiles groans around what tries to be a laugh. 

"More  _food,_ Stiles," Derek says, walking sort of stiffly back to his side of the table. 

"And then me, after?" Stiles laughs, picking up his chopsticks again.

"Yes," Derek says, voice pitched low and not even that sarcastic. 

"Jesus, Derek," Stiles says. He spears a piece of chicken on one chopstick point, already having forgotten how to use them right, and uses it to pick up a disgusting amount of noodles and stuff it all in his mouth. He's an excellent speed-eater, really. 

"We've got all night," Derek says, chewing his own food slowly as he settles down into his chair again. 

"All night?" Stiles asks. Well, tries to ask around a lot of food. 

"That's attractive," Derek deadpans, motioning a chopstick toward him. "I told everyone else to not come by tonight."

"So everyone knows we're having a date night?" Stiles asks, making sure to swallow first. 

"I didn't offer an explanation. I just told them not to stop over."

"Alpha says, betas do," Stiles says, automatic, but he's grinning. "I told Scott I was going to be over here, though."

Derek rolls his eyes, spearing a piece of chicken, Stiles-style. "So effectively everyone knows, because Scott is the worst gossip ever?" Derek supplies.

"Effectively," Stiles repeats. He feels momentarily thrown. It's not like they made any big secret about the past few months, even if no one acknowledged it, but if everyone officially knows now, well. 

"Well," Derek says, pausing to take a drink, because Stiles knows he likes dramatics even if he won't admit to it, "then they'll know to definitely not come over."

"Oh," Stiles says. "Good." He hides the grin that wants to split his face around another big mouthful of food, but Derek flashes a quick sort of half-smile at him that manages to look smug and fond at the same time, which is just a ridiculous expression on Derek's face, and it's for  _Stiles._


End file.
